will not only impoverish us for the present, which may be sometimes
the effect of useful and beneficial designs, but may depress us below
a possibility of recovery, and reduce us to receive laws from some
foreign power.

This is, indeed, a dreadful prospect; but what other can arise to us
from a war with France, with the most wealthy empire of the universe,
of which we were sufficiently shown the strength in the late war, by
the resistance which all the surrounding nations found it able to make
against their united efforts, and which the debts that they then
contracted, and the towns that were then destroyed, will not easily
suffer them to forget. Of this empire, my lords, thus powerful, thus
formidable, neither the dominions are contracted, nor the trade
impaired, nor the inhabitants diminished. The French armies are no
less numerous than under their late mighty monarch, their territories
are increased by new acquisitions, their trade has long been promoted
by the destruction of ours, and their wealth has been, by consequence,
increased. They have not, my lords, like this unhappy nation, been
exhausted by temporary expedients and useless armaments; they have not
harassed their merchants to aggrandize the court, nor thrown away the
opportunities which this interval of quiet has afforded them, in the
struggles of faction; they have not been multiplying officers to
betray the people, and taxing the people to support their oppressors;
but have with equal policy, diligence, and success, recovered the
losses which they then sustained, and enabled themselves to make
another stand against a general confederacy.

Against this empire, my lords, are we now to be engaged in a war,
without trade, and without money, loaded with debts, and harassed with
exactions; for what consequences can be expected from sending our